[Someone complained the other day, "It's awful," he said, "that all you hear in church nowadays is the conversion and the redemption of Christ. One gets tired of hearing these words a thousand times. If there is anyone among us who thinks like that, let me say to him now: he would not be bored immediately if he were converted! So, if someone is annoyed by the fact that he is always called to repentance in the Word, this is a sure sign that he has not yet repented. Whoever therefore does not like to listen to the evangelization of the congregation, should also consider this: a mother, when her little child is told of a kindness in a company, does not say that it is boring, she has heard it a thousand times; but she beams with joy the more she hears it! Well, then, if a man is bored to hear of Christ's grace all the time, if he is supposed to be converted, he does not love the Lord enough - and then he has every reason to be converted! It is also said in this Word, "Repent" (Ez 33:11).But now let's try to look at this exhortation, heard a thousand times, from another angle. A few days ago, someone gave me a small German-language tract to read. In it I read this striking statement that it is harder to be damned than saved. It takes more effort to be lost than to be saved. The reason it is so hard and strenuous for man to be damned is because God does not want one to be lost. He wants them to live in our Word! "I live, saith the Lord God, not to take pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked may turn from his way and live. Repent ye, turn ye from your wicked ways: for why should ye die, O house of Israel?" God did not will it so. God has made it really difficult for us to be damned! Indeed, only those who, according to the Hebrews, refuse to care "about such great salvation" (Heb 2:3a), can be damned. So great is this salvation, the saving will and grace of God is so immense, that it is almost the hardest thing in the world: to be damned! Let's try to elaborate on that now!
1) Whoever wants to perish must struggle with God's love for a lifetime. And this is not an easy task! It is said that love is the greatest power in the world. The Bible says: "Love is as strong as death, as hard as the grave, ... its flames are flames of fire" (Song of Songs 8:6b). It is not easy! And this is what he who does not want to be converted must do. Because, if he would not resist the love of God, he would be converted! If only once he would let this love come close to his heart, if only once he would really think it through, if only once he would clarify in himself what God's love means: then he would already be under the power of this love, then he would be overcome, captivated by this love. And God's love for us is not manifested in the fact that he has helped us in our troubles, given us health, prosperity, bread, but in the fact that he has come down to us, to sin, to damnation, to lift us out of it. Imagine falling into a precipice. A rescue expedition goes after him. They find him. From above, food, clothes, medicine are thrown down to him, so that he may first be strengthened, so that he may have the strength to cling to the rope that is lowered down after him, to be pulled up and saved. He would be a fool to say, "I've had enough bread and clothes, throw in some bacon. Then some more clothes, some more medicine, so that if I am ill I won't be embarrassed, and you can put the rope on, I don't need it. And yet most people who pray do this stupid thing, when they pray again and again just to ask God to help them in this or that trouble. Throw down from heaven health, a good job, or some other gift that will make this life in the abyss a better one! And then the lifeline thrown after him in Christ's death and resurrection may as well be pulled back by the Lord! That is not important, just the rest! But God gives all gifts so that the soul may be strengthened to cling to Christ, through whom the Lord wants to lift us up, to save us from death.
God has become man in the person of Jesus Christ, so that here on earth he may be the first of men. He really wants to block man's path to damnation and there are two or three times in every man's life, maybe more, when Christ stands face to face with him, so that he literally has to avoid Him if he does not want to be saved in any way, if he does not want to be damned in any way, if he does not want to bow down to Him and cling to Him! Perhaps there have been moments in your life when it would have been easier and simpler to bow down before Jesus and say to Him, like Thomas, "My Lord and my God" (John 20,28b), but you have inexplicably, stubbornly chosen the hard way, you have bypassed, you have broken through the ring of love of God with which He has surrounded you, you have cut yourself off from Him! Oh, how hard it is to be damned, and yet we choose it!
2) He who would be damned must struggle all his life against the grace of God! If it is possible for one to ignore God's love, it is also possible for one to reject grace! Let us understand what it means to reject grace. We can't imagine that! It is unlikely to have ever happened in any prison on earth. Unfortunately, it is all the more common in eternal prison. The grace of God softly and gently says, over and over again to the sinner, I have paid all your debts, but the sinner cares nothing for so great a grace. Grace says again, "I have blotted out your iniquities like a cloud" (Is 44:22), I have taken your punishment upon myself! And the sinner again overlooks such great salvation! Again grace says: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine" (Is 43:1b), I have delivered you from darkness, from damnation! And the sinner answers him in a spirit of equanimity: I didn't need that, I haven't gone that far! I have prepared a place for you in heaven, I will clothe you in white robes, I will put a palm branch in your hand, I will put a crown on your head, come quickly, let me lead you by the hand into glory! And still the sinner resists, saying, I'll see, I'll not go yet! I have other, more important things to do.
Behold, thus a man resists grace! But grace cannot be so easily shaken off, for that is why it is grace. If the soft and gentle word is not to the purpose, it comes with great earnestness. He warns and chastises! He cries out to you, as in the play that our evangelical brothers and sisters performed yesterday and today in our council chamber, He cries out to you, "Fool, this very night they will take your soul!"(Mt 12,20b) And if the harsh word of warning is not enough, He often comes with the blows, as He once did with Pharaoh. Nine plagues preceded the judgment there too! Each plague is a memento. God certainly does not want judgment! God wants mercy! Mercy! Grace will go to the end! When God's justice declares of the unfruitful fruit tree, "Cut it down; why does it occupy the ground in vain?" (Luke 13:7), grace pleads, "Lord, let it alone this year, until I receive it round about and fertilize it: and if it bear fruit, it is good; but if not, then cut it down." (Lk 13:6-9) When righteous anger has already forced the disobedient prophet to be cast into the sea, grace goes with him and preserves him in the belly of a whale and brings him back to dry land like Jonah, the repentant servant. Grace does all! And who can list all the things grace does, because God does not want the sinner to die, but to repent and live! Grace has already done everything for you! And not to care for such grace: oh, it is not easy! It is very difficult! How much easier to accept it, to stop resisting it, to surrender to it! To open your two hands, to open your heart wide, like a closed window in spring, and say: Thank you, Lord!
3) Whoever wants to be damned must look through all his life with a light-hearted, frivolous attitude at the things God has said in deadly earnest. He must disregard what God takes seriously. We are talking here of such things as death, resurrection, judgment, eternal life. These are poignant and real things which all men, without exception, will have to deal with at some time or other, and which can only be solved by God alone. I have a friend who does not dare to go to the cemetery because he does not want to think that he will be buried one day. How hard it is to live like that, in constant fear! How much easier it would be if he would face these questions seriously and deal with them according to the revelation and guidance of the Lord God! But to know that one day the moment of death, resurrection, judgment will come, and yet: to remain indifferent, yet to persevere in opposition to God, surely this must be exceedingly difficult!
It is impossible not to wonder: what will be my consolation at the hour of death? Where will I go when I have to take the great step from time to eternity? What will be left for me in that other world if I have to leave everything behind? What will happen to my sins? Who will forgive, will anyone forgive? Who will erase my debts from God's book? How will I become worthy to meet God and stand before him? How will I be resurrected? Will death really be a salvation for me, or will my sins and miseries be resurrected with me? How will I stand in judgment, where will I spend eternity? Is it easy to simply glide over these facts: it will just have to be somehow? Is it so easy to just get over these things and say: I don't care?! Is it so simple and easy to sleep over the trapdoor of hell, not knowing at what moment it will open beneath me? Not easy! Yet this is what he does who does not want to be converted! Oh, what a terrible waste of energy for a man who does not want to convert!
But it is much simpler what Jesus said: 'He who lives and believes in me shall never die.' (Jn 11,26) Because this is what it means to be converted: to believe in Jesus Christ! To repent means to admit my sins, to repent, and to ask God's forgiveness for them on the merits of Jesus Christ! It is easier to be saved than to be lost, because that is precisely what it means to stop fighting, to surrender, to lay down the weapons, the arguments, the excuses, the instinctive opposition, and to accept the peace that the Lord offers. To surrender means that I finally want what the Lord has wanted for so long: to be saved by Christ from sin, Satan, death! How great that God wants this at all costs. Behold, He says in our Word, "I live, saith the Lord GOD, not to delight in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from his way and live. Repent ye, turn ye from your wicked ways: for why should ye die, O house of Israel?"
Amen
Date: 11 February 1950.
Lesson
Zsid 2,1-4